


Had he changed that much ?

by SweetTsubaki



Series: Tim Drake Positivity Week (Sept 3rd-9th) [5]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, I love taking a situation and looking at it from different angles, I miss Pre-New52 Bruce. The guy was like advertising for hopelessly hopeful, It's not really TimKon but it can definitely be taken as such, Pre-New 52, beautiful friendships are beautiful, despite it always being from the same character's PoV, it's kind of, so many things you can do with that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-11 18:14:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12940920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetTsubaki/pseuds/SweetTsubaki
Summary: In Hindsight, Tim realizes he used to be both extremely naïve and aware of the world.He wasn't sure whether he had grown or just changed. But too much had happened for him to be the same.Tim Drake Positivity Week - Day 7: Personal Growth





	Had he changed that much ?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone. I'm sorry for not posting this sooner but, while most of my works are somewhat finished, I write on paper and rewriting on the computer takes time (and then comparing the first draft to the rewriting, and then trying to edit it a little because of mistakes...it takes more time than I'd like to admit...though the rewriting part is what takes the longest because sometimes it takes me like 3 days to do one sentence because I remember I have homework or I have to go to work...).  
> I won't be posting day 5 (favorite relationship) because...I couldn't choose between Dick and Kon and tried to use both and it ended up becoming sorta TimKon and I didn't want Dick to feel left out...or Bart and it's a mess I have to try to rework. If I can't manage to rework it I'll post the best version. As for day 6, I just thought I had rewritten it on my computer and posted it when I started rewriting day 7 but I haven't yet and I'm currently rewriting others (TimKon Week & the Batfam Halloween event) so... it'll come, one day ^^'.
> 
> ANYWAY.  
> This piece, while a standalone can be seen as a sequel to [that piece](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11585949).
> 
> I hope you enjoy it :)

In hindsight, Tim realizes he used to be both extremely naïve and aware of the world.

In the words of the internet, his naïveté mainly came from his privilege.

He knew a lot of things from reading newspapers (well…what had been about Batman and other heroes as well as what he could gather about Art History which, depending on the journalist, could open a window on the world) but it was “from afar”, he was never really confronted with their concrete application until he met Bruce and was transferred to a non-private (and non-boarding) school.  
Meeting Ives and Ariana was kind of a wake-up call and so was meeting Steph and, really, the many others who followed. There was also his constant denial of the state of his birth family and how it had impacted the way he took the death of Dick’s parents by projecting on Batman and Robin…that….took some time to deal with (hint: he had never truly dealt with it) and was the root of many of his issues. And then, then there was all he saw of the world as Robin.

Now, however, he had become almost completely cynical. There was a reason why he knew the Anti-Life Equation after all.  
Sort of.  
Because at the same time, even if it made sense, he refused it and there was a very simple reason for that.  
The naïve part of his being never truly left and, in a way, was heavily encouraged by his training with Batman. There is something to say after all, about a man dressed as a bat who tries to prevent others from being hurt the way he had been during the night and who tries to help redeem the crimes of others by giving them constant second chances as well as tries to prevent them by making affordable healthcare or rehabilitation programs through various of his own associations and giving money to others.  
Because that belief that people could change, that you should trust that they would try and deserve those new chances? It was all Bruce’s.

Of course, Bruce had also had to learn paranoia so some of his lessons went against this faith in people, yet, despite all the paranoia he had tried to create in his protégé, a part of Bruce always seemed to be burning with the trust he put in others (or maybe it was just a hope that he could trust them?).  
And Tim had been at the best place to see it worsen over the years.  
As such he ended up developing a paranoia-trust dichotomy similar to Bruce’s but…  
He never quite managed to take his paranoia as far as Bruce’s - or Dick's- because he couldn’t help himself and almost always trusted people he had just met despite himself. He had learned, however, not to be surprised if he was betrayed and to sometimes prepare for it even if a tiny bit - and even then,  he never completely managed to if his surprise that no one would give him the benefit of the doubt after Bruce's death was anything to go by. Because being trusting didn’t mean being an idiot.  

It was amazing how he had both changed and stayed the same over the years.

He had gone through a lot to learn to balance awareness turned paranoia and naïveté, cynicism and trust and there were periods of time when he couldn’t help the cynicism and paranoia overcoming him.  
It was especially bad after Conner’s death as it was probably the first time they had truly made themselves known (instead of simply just being him channeling his inner Bruce and Dick in order to appear professional) and then Bruce’s death. Though… It was mostly true after Bruce’s death. The truth is that after Conner’s he wasn’t really functioning enough of a person for anything besides crushing depression and overall numbness for those to overcome him (maybe he should consider Bart’s death as a threshold too?). And retrospectively, Bruce’s method of “repressing it until it no longer bothers you” hadn’t worked. on him. If anything it had made things worse. Because for Bruce, even for Dick really, repressing actually _fueled_ them. Of course, their level of angst and depression went up too but it still helped their vigilante life. On a side note it seemed like the Batfam was blessed with overall good friendships with outsiders who often did what they could to help them out of their funk when repressing became too much for them, and maybe that was Tim’s issues. His friends were either dead or… “out of the way” …Though unlike most of his family Tim didn’t really have any issue with asking for help.

So for Tim, that technique just…blocked him. Blocked him until his level of empathy seemed to start lowering and he just did what he had to do to help.

He honestly doesn’t know what would have happened to him if Bruce…No. If Conner hadn’t come back.  
Because realizing Conner was really alive, that he **could**  have his best friend back? It felt as if he could be happy again (that night he had smiled one of his first honest smiles of happiness, of contentedness in over two years and finding actual clues about Bruce’s survival was important but not for the obvious reasons).  
After that -and he hated saying it- but getting Bruce back wasn’t as important. Not because he didn’t care, of course, after all, he’d have given his life to bring him back if it had been needed. The thing is though, had Conner been with him in the first place when Bruce had died, he would have mourned him. He wouldn’t have been desperate to have him be alive to the point of noticing something was wrong. And this belief (no, this knowledge) mattered because having Bruce and Dick hadn’t helped him mourn Conner. Bruce being alive was more important for the family, or even Gotham at that point more than for Tim’s sake. Well except for his sanity (and that’s why he could finally digest the idea that his best friends were back, Paris hadn’t been a hallucination). Learning that Bruce was indeed alive and that he hadn’t “gone insane with grief” _was_ pretty great.

So having both back? That was the best feeling and it was also key in turning two years of hell into fuel for growth instead of just stagnating at an all-time low.

The sole fact that he still needed a crutch to help him deal said a lot about the state of his mental health but he had come a long way from the time when denial and projecting were his main coping mechanisms.  
Kon had helped a great deal in reminding Tim that he was **allowed**  to deal while Bruce was probably one of the first people to actually listen and respond to Tim’s babbling (whether it was about his days, his missions, and Tim had even started talking about some of his issues. For all intent and purposes, Bruce had acted like his father very early on. He had been a better father than his biological father had been. And Tim couldn’t help but feel bitter at the fact that Bruce had been a relatively better father for him before he adopted him than after…not on all matters seeing as he had been more openly affectionate with Tim but it didn’t prevent Tim from feeling like he always had to prove he was worthy of it. ....Damian hadn’t helped).  
It was the same with Dick who was his brother long before either were adopted by Bruce, who had become his brother when he had been his Batman, which is why losing him after Bruce (and Conner) died destroyed the small amount of stability Tim had left. But again, had Conner been alive, had tim still noticed something was wrong, he could have dealt with this.

It wasn’t so much because Tim was dependent on Conner more than he was on Bruce and Dick.  
Though he kinda was, it’s more that Conner had helped him realize that he didn’t need Bruce and Dick as much as he used to because he had actual relationships like Cassie, Bart or Cass (even Cissie and Anita had they not somewhat lost touch).  
But Conner died barely more than a year after they founded Young Justice and due to their own complicated history, the development of their friendship and their help with each other’s issues had happened too close to Conner’s death for Tim to be able to apply what he had learned in dealing healthily (or as healthily as possible). He had time to get attached to his best friend in the five months that followed the reveal of his identity but he hadn’t had enough time to _adapt_ to this attachment in a relatively healthy way. Still, Cassie had helped him a little after they made up -after she discovered how terribly he was dealing with Conner’s death- and so did Dick (after all he was the one Tim called when he felt suicidal enough to be tempted to jump or take one too many pills).

  
Mostly though, Tim was never as content as when he was with Conner. He’d love to say as happy but sadly, while it was a bit true, before Conner’s death, he and Tim’s friendship had truly started at a time when their environment prevented either of them from actually being happy and the fact that so much happened in such a short lapse of time didn’t help. Between Bruce being accused of murder, Tim’s father losing his money and going back to forgetting he had a son to take care of, then finding about his night life and his death following Steph’s, Conner having to deal with his non-existent life outside of heroics and trying to adapt to having a relatively stable family, having to get used to a new name, a new identity , learning that he was half megalomaniac instead of 9/10th Apple Pie as well as what seemed to be like feelings for Cassie to deal with -which, retrospectively weren’t even especially romantic,….It had been a lot.

But now, now that Tim had started processing everything that happened to him?  
Conner was the person who made him the happiest and the most content. He was even getting ready to talk to Bruce after having recently talked with Dick.

He was truly amazed at how so many terrible things had allowed him to get so much better than how he had started out when it came to trust and love. How putting his trust in others had been so rewarding and how even the harshest betrayals had helped him.

How despite everything, while he had become fairly cynical he could still be so utterly trusting. How, while he had shed some of his naïveté it hadn’t completely disappeared so much as evolved into a belief in people despite his knowledge that they could and might betray him.

And as he was sitting in the kitchen beside the picnic Alfred had prepared for him and Bruce to eat after their Tennis matches (which is when they would talk. There was to better way to unwind before a meeting you knew was gonna be tense).

He was eating freshly made cookies and couldn’t help feeling apprehensive of how their talk was going to go through. Yet, unlike what a lot of people would believe, Bruce **was**  a good listener when he realized the subject at hand was something important for the person he was communicating with (unless very specific circumstances). So if things had gone well with Dick? And if he had a shot at repairing his relationship with all his loved ones? He **would**  take it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna talk [here's my writing tumblr](https://sweetwriting.tumblr.com/)
> 
> When I rewrote this on word the first thing I thought was "damn this is so messy" then I stopped and realized "you wrote this from Tim's Point of Vue, of course it's messy"... if I start forgetting how I'm writing my stories I'm not gonna go far.... 
> 
> By the way, one @Chonaku-Things told me recently that it was impressive how I almost always manage to bring everything back to my ships (especially true for TimKon and SpideyTorch) and I would like to defend myself. It's not that I do it because I ship them, it's quite the opposite as I simply ended up shipping them because that's how they're written (whether on purpose or not). It's their fault, I just notice the patterns and end up shipping it because it's almost always there.
> 
> [here's a post](http://sweettsubaki.tumblr.com/post/168356509793/as-we-all-know-comics-have-a-fairly-messed-up) that explains how I see the timeline between the first Young Justice issue and Infinite Crisis (though it technically starts at the beginning of Robin v4).  
> Well...Sort of. I didn't detail it because for this all you need is an overview and I didn't have the faith to do it event by event (I have a relatively complete chart in my mind but I'm not an encyclopedia so there are some things that're missing or might be wrong for the detailed version that I'd have to look up. Which is why I keep this chart short and clear, it helps recenter the timeline and reduces the issues I have to go through when I need something a bit more complete, it's weird to have it done instead of just staying in my head).
> 
> Anyway, I'm a bit tired of people who talk about Tim's paranoia being on par with Bruce's as a way to show how extremely paranoid he is when  
> 1\. Bruce in Pre-New 52 wasn't actually that paranoïd (unlike New 52 or Nolan's movies, most of his choices come from his experience yet "paranoia" usually means it's not warranted).  
> 2\. Tim is like...one of the most trusting members of the Batfam. The end of his Robin run and his Red Robin series are his most distrustful periods and the kid still keeps on trusting people. (he told pretty much everyone he thought there might be a chance Bruce was alive. He told Cassie he had freaking heard the Anti-Life Equation, he trusted Lynx even if he knows it might not be true and I doubt it's just because she's pretty (even if Tim does have a weakness for pretty girls he still does these kinds of things everyone?...just not the making out part)).
> 
> I've also actually read A Lonely Place of Living and it was terrible. Like, I didn't expect to like it and I knew that if they tried to pretend N52/Rebirth Tim was the same as pre New 52 Tim it was going to get messy (different to the point of almost opposition personalities will do that to you), but I didn't expect it to be that bad.  
> If you want my more complete opinion on it [here's my liveblog of the Arc.](http://sweettsubaki.tumblr.com/post/168388229778/heres-an-index-for-my-a-lonely-place-of-living)


End file.
